99 Swang / That New Millenium Dime

99 sheep woke up/came in from the toxic fields/in search of a song/full of tic bites/wolves

against no walls/on a come up/calling bluffs/tea parties full of donkeys&elephants

99 sheep/infiltrated/media affiliated/99 sheep

awake/from a long slow dance/a tango w/existence

insistent on voicing the relevant/trying to remember the song

/seeking the face of god

/in small foot prints/& elevated empathy

/99 sheep sitting by the last tree/

near a polluted sea/

under a dirt colored sky/listening

for the dust/wanting to know what it know/trying to remember the song/

undoing/unlearning/unwilling to continue under standing/

over standing.imminent/not willing to stand under falling skies/

while a woman in white cried/a poet hypothesized/& the band dont miss a beat

ya know this a dime/see it swang/see it swang

anybody seen my song/?/

/maybe too late/did we stay too long

swang pendulum/did we stay too long/suns set/

aquarius on the dawn/so long in coming/spring forward for me/spring

unseal fates

the poor are getting poorer/greedy getting greater/

the poor stand in line after line/opening up store doors/

never getting enough/99 sheep want more/see them stomping on

what held them up before/but still cant get enough/

camping on wall street/city plazas and outside retail stores

open open we want more

/shiny bull shit/more lies/more open eyes/more of the sheep to realize

/in real life/the winners live and the losers die/no one testifies/

watch it swang/watch it swang/does the movement mean anything

/or is it just the latest dance/as the sun sets in babylon/

somebody wake nero/tell him its time to go/

are they selling humanity in the store/? can we find it by the fire

as the sun sets/will the truth finally feel safe in the open/or remain hidden

behind/the lies?/is there a final truth

/big enough to sing us human/ so far from

the garden/driven by the wheel/ whose driving the wheel/who stole my song/

i know i should be singing/wake me up

99 sheep/? still trusting polytricksters/take their ritalin

& march/ hoping for brighter tomorrows/should have remembered from the

start/we the people/we invented the wheel/we let them drive it/wolves at our table

driving the wheel/99 marching sheep/say they long to be free/

sorrowland rebellion/

who own this army/who own this revolt/who are these sheep

pharoahs army watches/barely distracted

from setting fires/ burning forest/designer drug and king making/god build us a better reality/show they just faking/war waging/culture caging/world carnage/ for cash consumption/dollars over you management of everything/no social medicine/

let em die

/less of them to kill/lock up/case manage

disconnect/foreclose/evict/leave them without a song/

waiting to go/

/raid/disperse/reassemble/sheep movement/

one planet

/occupado/in search of a song

a place for everything/how things get so out of place/

wolf movement/

/disrupt tyranny/cry the sheep/

stay in ya lane reply the tyrants/

?s at the end of a paradigm/sheep remembering the wheel

sheep want the wolves out of the circle/wanna slow down the wheel/

want to remember/beginning to want to understand/what they ought to know/should never have forgot/dirt and dust lessons/leaping backwards/with authority/never should have forgot/remembering the days before the wheel/and the day we let a wolf come to dinner/woke up sheared/fleeced/out to sea/wrapped in red velvet/surfing the internet/looking for the wave of tomorrow/they fenced the wild west/young men get on a ship/the new frontier is the front line/middle east/africa/make us a market/we got shiny shit for sale/made in indonesia/99 sheep woke up/ & marched/like shearlings/worried about tomorrow/confused about yesterday/lookin for the wheel/

got to take it back/

99 sheep finally see/maybe eligible for freedom/singing

want a dialog/turned off the tv/repurposed twitter/

signed out of facebook/went into deep sleeper status/went underground/came out the closet/

became diverse/longed for polarity

leaderless/leaderfull

messy/like democracy/confused like a slaughter yard

sheep/wont drink the water

turned off the news and became the lead story

/revolution televised/from cairo to oakland/

from the foothills and in the flatlands/fall fell on sheep

springing forward/spring around the world/the day of the lamb/song heard round the world

lamb rising/sorrowlands rebelling/arrested/encamped/blind folds off/still marching blind/in need of an end game/funky/dog shit/hay and tents/wall street/ogawa plaza/san jose/ berkeley/ sebastopol /boston/denver/ campuses /washington /the state of the states restated/by sheep on a wolf hunt/no time for a blue blooded tea party/invitation to rebellion/sorrowland rebellion/sorrowland spring/day of the sheep/ sheep take the street/but/can they take the day

/?/

dignity aint free/anarchist/scientologist/bar keepers/ barbers/free range/candle making bakers/itt techs/ bee keepers/buddhist& baptist/organic/green/unemployed/underrepresented/unarticulated.disenfranchised/

othered/unimpressed north mericans/one paycheck away from it all falling down/or living in the shadow of their lives //

after it fell down/broke on the hill and crashed into the abandoned merican dream//

wolfs offer permits

?how civil can civil unrest be?

/tired being run over by the wheel/

would buy american/aint got no money/

aint got no job

aint got no house

aint nuthin made in merica any more no way

/we export broken dreams

/99 per cent got

broken lives/out of warranty/sold with a balloon payment

/& its pass due/

aint got enough faith to keep dancing\99 sheep

&/ the band dont miss a beat/

chronic homeless as a frontline/absurd in america/the displaced embraced

?/too poor for the 99/wait one more payday/living a foreclosure away/?are they crazy before they lose their houses/invisible now/99 look at ya real face/

sheep is sheep

or would you rather be a wolf/tics/against no walls/ask a veteran how it plays

on a slow day/after your killings done/ya just another one of the 99/

they told us

jesus was with them/in search of the one/but i remember the camels eye

/& wolves lie/

divine dope/

duplicity/

& sheep/

miles to go/

awake now/dont sleep

dawn might come/breaking paradigms

like running yolks/thrown off/by sheep standing

/we are the people/hear us singing/we are the people/

About Ayodele Nzinga, MFA, PhD

I create; therefore I am.
This entry was posted in Black Arts, North American African Perspective, Poetry, spokenword, That New Millennium Dime, Uncategorized, work in progress and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to 99 Swang / That New Millenium Dime

  1. Vivid and lucid as usual.

  2. Powerful and yes as Zahieb says “lucid”. Continue on sis, with your amazing song.

  3. Naru Kwina says:

    You are so amazing!
    I love this piece.

    Naru

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